A group of 22 foundations plans to spend more than half a billion dollars in support of local journalism over the next five years, driven by the view that a strong democracy depends on informing the public about local affairs.
Called Press Forward, the effort is led by the MacArthur and Knight foundations, which have committed $150 million each. They are joined by some of the largest grant makers in the United States, including the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford, Hewlett, and Robert Wood Johnson foundations.
Calling the $500 million goal a “floor, not a ceiling,” MacArthur President John Palfrey lamented the difficulties faced by local news outlets over the past two decades, when more than 2,200 newspapers went out of business. As a result, he says, more than 20 percent of the nation lives in a “news desert,” with little coverage of local politics, news, and events.
“What is going to fill that void — likely very partisan and potentially mis- and disinformation,” he said. “And that’s not going to be good for democracy.”
Press Forward will consist of a pooled fund, in which donors combine their money, potentially allowing them to devote relatively large sums of cash to single projects, or to “aligned” giving, in which foundations make grants to specific journalism projects as they see fit. Palfrey and others involved did not provide a figure for how much has been committed to the effort in total nor did they provide an estimated split between the two types of giving.
MacArthur’s commitment comes on top of the $30 million it currently spends on journalism projects each year. It is the foundation’s newest “big bet,” in which it devotes a large sum of money to a single project. Knight’s commitment doubles its journalism grant-making budget over the next five years.
(The MacArthur Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)
The effort envisions four major funding streams: hiring new reporters and editors at newsrooms; investing in technical platforms and legal assistance for fledgling news outlets; diversifying newsrooms and providing coverage to historically underserved consumers; and advocating for policies to support news outlets, which could include things like payroll tax deductions for newsrooms or making subscriptions tax deductible.
The demise of local news has been a slow-motion wreck. For two decades, advertising revenues have dried up and newsrooms have been emptied, resulting in scant coverage of local issues and a dwindling subscriber base. The Press Forward donors envision a new journalism business model that strengthens news outlets and, in turn, stokes demand, as well as eventually more donors. They see cities and rural areas with newsrooms packed with eager reporters using up-to-date technology, who can provide the information readers say is most helpful.
By incorporating the expressed needs of readers into what is covered, the idea is to make local news so indispensable that local foundations and everyday donors will see news coverage as essential and worthy of their continued support, whether the news outlets are structured as a business or a nonprofit.
The result would be a more diverse source of revenue for news organizations — including foundation grants, individual donations, and memberships, as well as traditional advertising and subscription payments — and a change in public perception about how to pay for the news, says Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.
Without authoritative local news coverage, policy coverage tends to be nationalized, she said, contributing to a deepening ideological divide. For many, the polarization has resulted in “news avoidance,” as readers have tired of discouraging stories about political infighting. If local news coverage is seen as essential, she said, people may be willing to take the time to read it, and possibly donate to news outlets, just as people donate to public radio stations.
“We may think we need to support our local library or art museum or the Red Cross, but we don’t necessarily think of the local news organization as being an essential pillar of the health of our community,” she said. “That needs to change.”
Challenging Goals
Journalism experts cheered the huge investment made by MacArthur, Knight, and the other foundations. The two grant makers would like their example to invigorate giving by local foundations to spur news coverage. But changing giving habits and drawing new readers, especially younger ones who did not grow up reading a local paper, will be difficult.
One way to encourage investment is by ensuring news coverage that equips readers to become more active, responsible citizens, said Elizabeth Green, chief executive of Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education.
“I’m not going to pretend it’s easy because it’s definitely not,” said Green.
From 2009 to 2019, foundations dedicated $1.7 billion to journalism-related projects, excluding journalism education, according to a study by Candid, an organization that tracks foundation giving, and Media Impact Funders, a network of grant makers that focus on media.
Giving to news outlets seems to have increased in the past few years. A 2023 survey of more than 100 funders that support journalism conducted by the NORC at the University of Chicago found that more than half have increased their grant-making in the past five years and more than one-third said journalism was a new area of grant making.
The American Journalism Project may be a significant factor in that growth. Since 2017, the organization has pooled money from national foundations, including Knight and MacArthur, to raise nearly $150 million for local news outlets.
Signal Ohio, which runs a news operation in Cleveland and plans to open newsrooms in Akron, Cincinnati, and Columbus, benefited from the project, which has helped the nonprofit raise a total of $15 million since it was founded in 2022.
Rita McNeil Danish, the organization’s chief executive, believes that by providing free access to articles and sharing them widely, she can incrementally increase readership and attract contributions.
But to do so, her news team will have to deliver information that readers can’t do without. Signal has a service reporter who regularly writes “how-to” stories on everyday topics like what to do if your water is shut off or how to call for trash pick-up.
To help drive coverage, Signal trained and pays more than 600 Cleveland residents from all corners of the city to cover public meetings and deliver news tips to McNeil Danish’s staff. The organization holds public meetings on specific topics, such as a recent gathering on “bindovers,” or the practice of trying minors accused of a crime as adults.
McNeil Danish and her leadership team also hold regular office hours at local libraries to listen to concerns and suggestions from whoever wants to drop by.
The idea, she said, is to generate trust, especially among readers of color.
“Those who come from diverse communities think they have been treated horribly by the media,” she said. “The only way that we rebuild that trust is to infuse [diversity, equity, and inclusion] as a component of the stories that we write.”
For its early grants, the Knight Foundation will focus on services designed to improve how local news outlets produce and distribute their work, raise money, or protect against lawsuits.
For instance, Knight will provide $2 million to the Tiny News Collective, which provides digital publishing, fundraising, and legal support.
Jim Brady, vice president of Knight’s journalism program, says he would have benefited from similar outside help as he set up online news operations in Denver, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh over the past decade. Back then, he spent about three quarters of his time on site design, human resources, and developing a computer system for his editors and reporters to share their work, rather than focusing on journalism.
“I had to figure all this stuff on my own,” he said.
If both established big city dailies and small upstart news operations are able to develop sites that aren’t clunky and can provide readers with a mix of investigative reporting and essential daily news, Brady is confident that local coverage can succeed financially and bring people together at the same time.
National media coverage, he said, thrives on division. But a lot of local news isn’t partisan.
“When a hurricane hits town, nobody’s rooting for the hurricane,” he said. “When the local choir goes to America’s Got Talent, only a real psychopath is going to not root for the local kids to win.”
